Climate change raises serious concerns for policymakers that want to ensure the success of long-term policies. To guarantee satisfactory decisions in the face of deep uncertainties, adaptive policy pathways might be used. Adaptive policy pathways are designed to take actions according to how the future will actually unfold. In adaptive...

Adaptive policies have emerged as a valuable strategy for dealing with uncertainties by recognising the capacity of systems to adapt over time to new circumstances and surprises. The efficacy of adaptive policies hinges on detecting on-going change and ensuring that actions are indeed taken if and when necessary. This is operationalised by...

In order to reach climate goals, policymakers stimulate homeowners to invest in sustainable measures in and around their house. Unfortunately, however, the number of green home measures lacks behind. This article introduces perceived hassle as an important reason for this shortfall. It is claimed that homeowners perceive hassle during different...

Integration of flood risk in spatial planning is increasingly seen as a way to enhance cities’ resilience to the growing flood hazards, albeit its operationalisation remains challenging. This study aims to explain the reasons for this difficulty through the case study of Guangzhou, a Chinese delta city that is highly vulnerable to coastal,...

Archaeological studies typically describe arid areas as extremely unpleasant areas for human occupation and use. Without suggesting that arid areas are pleasant places, however, this paper provides a reassessment of the meaning of aridity for an area showing a vast amount of evidence of (past) human activities. Several climatic proxy data...

Key observational indicators of climate change in the Arctic, most spanning a 47 year period (1971–2017) demonstrate fundamental changes among nine key elements of the Arctic system. We find that, coherent with increasing air temperature, there is an intensification of the hydrological cycle, evident from increases in humidity, precipitation,...

Precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) showed different spatial changes during 1979-2016, with an increasing trend over the northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) and a slightly negative trend over the southern Tibetan Plateau (STP). The changes in precipitation moisture sources over the NTP and STP are investigated using the improved Water...

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP 2017) report identifies the Arctic as the largest regional source of land ice to global sea-level rise in the 2003-2014 period. Yet, this contextualization ignores the longer perspective from in situ records of glacier mass balance. Here, using 17 (>55°N latitude) glacier and ice cap mass...

Climate change mitigation calls for a massive reduction in CO2-emissions from human sources. A primary human source is combustion of fossil fuels. Transport by road is one of the major and growing users of fossil fuels worldwide. Private cars with internal combustion engines dominate our roads. This paper discusses the feasibility of aligning...

Rising sea levels due to climate change can have severe consequences for coastal populations and ecosystems all around the world. Understanding and projecting sea-level rise is especially important for low-lying countries such as the Netherlands. It is of specific interest for vulnerable ecological and morphodynamic regions, such as the...

According to the IPCC Climate Change projections by 2050 temperatures in southern Spain will have increased noticeably during the summer. Housing-in its current form-will not be able to provide a suitable response to this new climate scenario, and will in turn prompt an increase in cooling energy consumption and a series of problems relating...

The application of risk-based approaches for the design of flood infrastructure has become increasingly common in flood management. This approach, based on risk reduction and reliability, is used to assess the performance of conventional interventions (e.g., flood defences and dams) and to support decisions regarding their implementation....

The Paris Agreement was a monumental stride towards global climate change governance. It unlocked the climate change gridlock, introducing country-subjective commitments and a five-year review mechanism. To support the implementation of the Paris Agreement, we designed the Nzoia WeShareIt climate change game. Game sessions were conducted in...

A multi-country, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used for the first time to evaluate the economic and water resource availability effects of trade liberalization (removal of import tariffs) and facilitation (reducing non-tariff barriers) under climate change in the Nile Basin. The analysis uses the GTAP 9 Database...

This study presents a novel methodology to estimate the impact of local sea level rise and extreme surges and waves in coastal areas under climate change scenarios. The methodology is applied to the Ebro Delta, a valuable and vulnerable low-lying wetland located in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea. Projections of local sea level accounting...

The transition to low carbon energy systems cannot solely rely on technological innovation. It also requires social innovation. In the context of energy transition social innovation can be defined as innovation that is social in its means and which contributes to low carbon energy transition, civic empowerment and social goals pertaining to the...

Changes in society's vulnerability to natural hazards are important to understand, as they determine current and future risks, and the need to improve protection. Very large impacts including high numbers of fatalities occur due to single storm surge flood events. Here, we report on impacts of global coastal storm surge events since the year...

Dams can produce electricity and ensure water security, but at the same time they radically alter the hydrological regime of rivers with significant consequences for the economic and environmental welfare of the region in which they are located. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is currently the most frequently used framework for the economic...

The urban heat island (UHI) is a phenomenon whereby temperature levels in urban areas are higher than in surrounding rural settings. Urban heat islands are a matter of increasing concern, since they can affect communities by exacerbating air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (due to the greater use of air conditioning) and the occurrence of...